"Human, civilized society has lost the battle against barbarism. I have lost all hope."

[hifiguy]

87. History teaches an ugly lesson.

Barbarians by definition will not listen to reason. They never have and they never will. The only way to stop barbarians is with a ruthless, huge force, which of course implicates grave moral questions.

World War II is an example. Was the firebombing of Nazi Germany and Tokyo a moral horror? Of course. Would it have been morally acceptable to use the atomic bomb on Germany, if it had been finished a few months earlier? I am inclined to think it would have been given the nature of the Nazi regime. As for the use of the Bomb against Japan, there are sound cases to be made both for its use and refraining from using it. The conquest of Japan was going to cost millions of lives, many those of civilians, in any case, Bomb or no Bomb, Perhaps seeing what the Bomb did made it possible to get through the Cold War without an atomic exchange between the US and USSR. I have little doubt it was a contributing factor.

The only relevant question, as I see it, is do the barbarians present a sufficiently imminent threat to what we loosely call civilization to use what can be regarded as even greater barbarism to save itself. That is never an easy question to resolve.

I do not think ISIS rises to that level, at least not yet. The day may come and it would be wrong-headed to deny that it might.